Broken Graphics Card?

Hax0r778Feb 6, 2011, 3:47 AM

Hi,

This is my first forum post, but I read Tom's Hardware every day, so I thought I would ask for your help. Last week I got a bsod with a stop code 116. I got this bsod every time I booted up after this, but my computer would work perfectly in safe-mode. I looked this stop code up and concluded that my graphics card (an 8800 gts) was broken. Therefore I just purchased and installed a new graphics card (6850).

The new graphics card has been working great (Dead Space 2 at > 80 fps maxed), but just today (after working great for 2 days) I got another bsod with the error code 124. I tried restarting, but my computer froze on the windows load screen. I restarted again and everything seemed fine except my internet wouldn't work. Apparently my ethernet port (which is on a separate pci board) is now broken. I have successfully run Dead Space 2 since the bsod and there were no problems.

Should I be worried that the new graphics card is broken too?

My question now is therefore what is broken? Is my new graphics card also bad? Is my motherboard (which both graphics card and ethernet were plugged into) bad. Could it even be a psu problem? Or are they unrelated errors and my ethernet port just died? I just want to get to the bottom of this fast so I know whether or not to return my new graphics card before the newegg replacement policy expires.

Sorry this is pretty vague. I have just been confused on what is broken, and I don't want to have to replace everything. Because I though the issue was graphics card related I have posted it here. If this is wrong please tell me and I will put it in the correct place.

IDK for sure the cause, but at one point I thought my ethernet port was broken. I plugged a wireless card into it and used that for a couple weeks (a royal pain cause of ubuntu), before I figured out that the NIC was somehow frozen so bad that I had to unplug the computer, not just turned off, for like 20 seconds before it lost power and reset. I am not exactly sure what happened, but it works fine now. Chances are that won't help, but it's worth a shot, I guess.

If nobody else has any genius ideas, you could reinstall Windows, but that's definitely no guarantee. Or you could try another OS like linux and see if it gives errors, that way you will know it is hardware-related.

This is my first forum post, but I read Tom's Hardware every day, so I thought I would ask for your help. Last week I got a bsod with a stop code 116. I got this bsod every time I booted up after this, but my computer would work perfectly in safe-mode. I looked this stop code up and concluded that my graphics card (an 8800 gts) was broken. Therefore I just purchased and installed a new graphics card (6850).

The new graphics card has been working great (Dead Space 2 at > 80 fps maxed), but just today (after working great for 2 days) I got another bsod with the error code 124. I tried restarting, but my computer froze on the windows load screen. I restarted again and everything seemed fine except my internet wouldn't work. Apparently my ethernet port (which is on a separate pci board) is now broken. I have successfully run Dead Space 2 since the bsod and there were no problems.

Should I be worried that the new graphics card is broken too?

My question now is therefore what is broken? Is my new graphics card also bad? Is my motherboard (which both graphics card and ethernet were plugged into) bad. Could it even be a psu problem? Or are they unrelated errors and my ethernet port just died? I just want to get to the bottom of this fast so I know whether or not to return my new graphics card before the newegg replacement policy expires.

Sorry this is pretty vague. I have just been confused on what is broken, and I don't want to have to replace everything. Because I though the issue was graphics card related I have posted it here. If this is wrong please tell me and I will put it in the correct place.

Before you go replacing everything lets try eliminating some components. I'd easter egg the ram, boot with one stick and then try the other. Also memtest86 will let ya know if you're getting any errors.

I suspect since you are getting problems with both the new video card and the old one, we can eliminate those as the issue.

Multiple faults can occur, most people will tell you otherwise but it does happen sometimes. However, in this case with a couple of different problems it seems it is a more system wide type of issue.

So that brings us to software (the Operating system) or hardware (mobo or PSU). Since you are having no problems in safe mode, that typically points to driver issues, as most hardware drivers aren't loaded in safe mode. Have you ensured you are using the latest drivers? How about direct X?

Have you scrubbed your hard drive of the old nVidia drivers? First thing I would do is dl a driver cleaner (CCleaner is good), enter into safe mode and scrub the drivers + all cab files. When rebooting into win7, don't allow the OS to install the video card. Instead have the latest Catalyst drivers on hand and install them. Don't use the drivers on the CD. Give that a shot then we'll look at hardware issues.